[3] Her first known publication was an elegy, "To the Memory of the Truly Honoured John Dryden, Esq", published anonymously in the collection Luctus Britannici (1700).

She experimented with a wide range of literary forms including lyrics, panegyrics, pastorals, polemics, religious meditations, and satires.

An Ode" (1722), the poet exposes the faulty logic of "Sir J– S–" and concludes that he and other men who would deny women access to learning are motivated by an avaricious Soul, Which would, with greedy Eyes, monopolize the whole: And bars us Learning on the selfish Score: That conscious of our native Worth, Ye dread to make it more.

80—84)[6] Her work initially circulated in manuscript, but due to financial necessity she published Miscellany Poems on Several Subjects anonymously in 1722, and thereafter sought print publication.

Her friend Henry Cromwell at one point gave Thomas some letters he had received from a young Alexander Pope.

For this infraction he lampooned Thomas in The Dunciad (1728) as "Curll's Corinna" (II 66): Full in the middle way there stood a lake, Which Curl's Corinna chanc'd that morn to make: (Such was her wont, at early dawn to drop Her evening cates before his neighbour's shop) (Bk.

[10] Her publishing history is complicated and as one commentator has it, "Her few authentic works have been upstaged by the many miscellaneous writings which survive in forms probably significantly changed from the way she left them.

"[11] Another commentator describes Thomas's critical reputation until the twentieth century: "The poetry - often witty and lively, with sharp satiric insights into the social predicament of women - is predictably dismissed, though part of the fate of Rosalinda in Thomas's 'The Execration' is ironically borne out by the poet's own experience: 'To live reserved and free from blame, / And yet incur an evil fame' (l.